In a conventional computer-based scanning environment, wherein a computer is operatively coupled to a flatbed scanner, the user opens the cover of the scanner, places the item to be scanned on the scanner's bed, closes the cover, and initiates a scanning process.
Once initiated, the scanning process typically performs a quick low-resolution scan of the entire bed. This initial or preview scan can serve several purposes. Firstly, the preview scan allows advanced scanning software (typically running in the computer) to determine the location/area of the item being scanned with respect to the overall area of the bed. Such an autocrop process reduces the size of the subsequent final scan or rescan of the item by only scanning a likely smaller area of the bed encompassing the item.
Secondly, the advanced scanning software may be able to determine if the item has been placed on the bed at an angle, i.e., skewed with respect to the orientation of the bed of the scanner. If so, then the deskew process can rotate the preview scanned image of the item, as needed, to align it with the horizontal/vertical orientation of the scanner bed. This can be an automatic process too.
As a result of the autocrop and deskew processes, rather than rendering the entire scanned bed of the scanner with the item therein, the advanced scanning software can render a cropped and deskewed image of the item. The user may then decide to proceed with a final higher-resolution scan.
Sometimes, however, the user may only be interested in a portion of the scanned image. Here, the user may decide to go ahead with the final scan and subsequently manually cut out or otherwise select the portion of interest using another software application, such as, e.g., a drawing application. This requires access to and knowledge of the requisite resources. Furthermore, such efforts take additional time and often require the storage and/or handling of initially large data files. Such processing might also cause degradation in the image quality.
Consequently, for these reasons and others, it would be beneficial to have improved methods for use during the scanning process that allow the user to select portions of a preview image for subsequent final scanning.